


Archipelago

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a difference between being lonely and being alone. Draco Malfoy is alone. Ron Weasley is quite probably insane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the most belated challenge fic I've ever written, overdue by a whopping seven weeks. ::cringes:: It was _intended_ for the [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/ron_draco/profile)[**ron_draco**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/ron_draco/) Summer of Smut...I guess it's more like an early Christmas present at this point. I offer my most humble apologies to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sanjubaba/profile)[**sanjubaba**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sanjubaba/), who has been waiting oh-so-patiently for this. Much thanks to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/marginaliana/profile)[**marginaliana**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/marginaliana/), [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/libgirl/profile)[**libgirl**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/libgirl/) and [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/le_calmar_geant/profile)[**le_calmar_geant**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/le_calmar_geant/), my beloved beta crew. ::pets all::

_No man is an island.  
John Donne  
_

"Someone is trying to kill you."

Draco Malfoy looked up from the financial section of the _Daily Prophet_ at the person who had dared to interrupt his attempt at a peaceful lunch. He had come to this dour café at the dead end of Knockturn Alley, despite its inferior food and decidedly grubby atmosphere, in hopes of having a quiet meal alone. He did not want to talk to anyone, he did not want to be talked to, and the only reason he had not Apparated home was his house-elf, Nibblet, who had threatened to put bugs in his soup if he set foot in the Manor before four o'clock. She was under the impression that Draco needed to get out more, and not even swatting her with a rolled-up magazine could deter her from saying so, often and at length. Draco did not want to listen to Nibblet today, as his arm hurt from too much swatting, and he was not entirely certain that she was kidding about the bugs. He had just wanted to have lunch, preferably death-threat-free.

The man who had interrupted his quiet, his solitude, and his freedom from death threats had also sat down on the other side of the greasy table. He wore a threadbare jumper that was short in the sleeves, and no cloak despite the deep, lingering sigh of winter in the air. If not for his hair, Draco would have thought him a total stranger.

As it was, Draco asked, "Weasley, what are you doing here?"

"Warning you," Ron Weasley said. They had not seen each other for some years, and it was Draco's opinion that Weasley had not weathered them well. His trademark ginger hair was shaggy and fell nearly to his collar, and he looked thinner than usualDraco would even go so far as to call him scrawny. But these details were not nearly so unusual as Weasley's eyes, which were boring unblinkingly into Draco's with an intensity normally seen only in powerful warlocks and the criminally insane. "Someone is trying to kill you," Weasley repeated, monotone.

"I see," Draco said, looking back to his paper. "And who is this would-be assassin?"

"I don't know."

Draco peered over the top edge of the paper. Weasley was still looking at him. It was rather remarkable the paper hadn't started to smolder yet. "You don't know who it is?"

"No."

"Then how do you know that I'm in danger of being killed?"

"I'm a Seer."

Draco put the paper down very slowly and carefully. Yes, indeed, those eyes were an earmark of the criminally insane. "Weasley," he said, "have you been drinking?"

Weasley shook his head vigorously, but homed in on Draco's face again. He had yet to blink. "I don't drink," he said earnestly. "I can't drink, I'm a Seer. You're going to die."

"Yes, you've said that," Draco said. "Would you please quit staring at me?"

Weasley looked about for a moment, as if he was mildly surprised to find himself in his present surroundings. "I just wanted to warn you," he mumbled.

"A kind gesture which has touched me deeply, I assure you."

Weasley suddenly scowled, an expression Draco found far more familiar than the googly eyes. "This isn't about kindness," he snapped. "It's not even about you. I don't even _like_ you." He folded his arms and looked away moodily.

Draco had come to the café for food, and he had never particularly enjoyed dinner theater, but this statement piqued his curiosity. He sighed and folded his newspaper onto the table. "I assure you, Weasley, the feeling is mutual, but that does raise the question of why you bothered to bother me, doesn't it?"

"I had to," Weasley mumbled. "I had to, all right? I couldn't just watch this time."

"Watch?"

"Watch someone die," Weasley said. "When I knew first. So now I've told you and if you die anyway it isn't my fault."

Draco considered this carefully. It was, in some ways, a sentiment with which he could genuinely sympathize; too many witches and wizards of their generation were seeing thestrals these days. On the other hand, the circumstances made it difficult for him to take Weasley seriously. Not that he ever had. "Nevertheless," he said, "I'm touched. Now will you please leave me in peace?"

Weasley cocked his head at that, looking rather like a dog that has heard a far-off whistle. "You don't believe me," he said.

"I cannot say that I do."

"Why don't you believe me?"

Draco picked up the paper again. "Because I think you are insane."

Weasley snorted and fell silent. Draco went back to the article he had been reading, which was attempting to argue that allowing foreigners to buy up all of Wizarding Britain's industries was somehow good for the economy, only without actually using those words in that order. He gave up on that idiot after another paragraph and went on to a more promising article concerning changes in flying carpet regulations, and when he finished that one he peered over the edge of the paper to see where the hell the waitress with his food was.

Weasley was still staring at him.

"Stop that," Draco said.

"Stop what?"

He sighed. "You are a grown man, Weasley, and you know perfectly well what you're doing."

"I'm _warning_ you, you git."

Draco rustled the paper at Weasley, in the vain hope that what worked on flies might work on larger pests. It didn't. "Yes, well, consider me warned. You've done it. Congratulations. Now go away."

Weasley rolled his eyes. "Dunno why I bothered," he muttered. "S'not like anyone's gonna miss you."

"Just my shareholders," Draco said, turning his face back to the newspaper.

"No," Weasley said, "not even them."

Draco looked up and asked, "Are you accusing my business partners of harboring ill will toward me?" But Weasley wasn't looking at him anymore, finally; Weasley was looking at something halfway between he nose and the tabletop, and his brows were knit, and he was blinking fiercely as if he had something in his eyes. He didn't seem to hear a word Draco was saying. "Er. Weasley?"

"They don't give a damn," Weasley suddenly blurted though not too loudly, for which Draco was thankful, because even though he'd come to the café of his own free will he didn't necessarily want to be seen there. "It's all about the gold. Your estate reverts to Tonks upon your death, she doesn't care about broomsticks, she'll sell all the stock and use the gold for a holiday with Remus. The shareholders will form a, a thingy, where the partners have most of the shares and B...Br...Ble...Blank, Blanky, a German bloke is gonna be at the head. It's good for business."

The most recent investor in Draco's company was in fact an Austrian named Blankenship, but he was not alarmed by Weasley's pronouncement. Much. Their names had been in the papers, after allpresumably Weasley was no so far gone he couldn't read the papers. "Is that so?" Draco asked mildly.

"The Ministry will take the house, though," Weasley carried on. "They'll strip it to the foundations looking for evidence against your father. The portraits will go to a museum, or Hogwarts. They won't find the door in the drawing room, but they'll send everything you own through the Department of Mysteries for testing before they donate it to the poor fund at St. Mungo's. The house-elf...they'll try to move the elf. Hermione will try. But she won't want to leave the graveyard... everyone else in Britain will be toasting you, but she'll want to stay with you...because she's the only one who will show up to mourn..."

Draco felt like someone had trickled a bit of tea down the back of his neck, a shocking sort of hot-cold feeling. "What," he asked very carefully, "do you know about my house-elf?"

Weasley stopped blinking, and his head snapped up. He glanced around, suddenly confused again. "What?"

"This is not the time to play games," Draco growled. "Explain yourself."

Weasley shook his head like a wet dog. "Told you," he said. "I'm a Seer."

"Bollocks," Draco said, and while Weasley hadn't been too terribly loud, that exclamation had been; several people turned around and looked at him with varying degrees of disapproval, except for one fellow at the bar who appeared to toast him. He lowered his voice and added, "I don't believe in prophecy, unless you count the self-fulfilling kind."

"Well, this isn't a prophecy, is it?" Weasley said. "Or there'd be no point in trying to stop it."

Now it was Draco shaking his had. "I don't believe in any of it," he snapped. "It's rubbish. And I don't know how you know anything about my affairs, let along my house-elf, or why you chose me of all people, and today of all days"

"I told you," Weasley said, "I had to warn you"

"Oh, yes, it's a very effective warning, isn't it?" Draco snorted. "Someone is going to kill me. Can you tell me who, then? How? Where and when?'

Weasley's face actually fell; he was beginning to fidget. "It, er, it doesn't work like that, Malfoy"

"I thought not," Draco said. The waitress with his meal had finally appeared; he waved her off and gathered up his cloak and newspaper. If Weasley was the sort of riff-raff this restaurant allowed into the dining area, he was not going to encourage them by actually paying for anything. "Terribly sorry that your bizarre little joke has fallen flat, Weasley...oh, wait, actually, I'm not, seeing as it was at my expense."

Weasley sighed. "Knew you wouldn't believe it," he muttered.

"Then why in Merlin's name did you bother?" Draco asked.

Weasley shrugged, and looked up at him with a perfectly normal facial expression for the first time. It was the very look of grief, and Draco felt hot and cold again. "I wanted to warn you," he said again. "So it couldn't be my fault."

Draco walked away. He was careful to bump into the waitress as he passed, not hard enough to cause her to spill the tray, but to get her attention: _look, you stupid wench, if you let madmen harass your customers they're all going to walk out just like me._ He ignored the fellow at the bar who, having toasted him, apparently wanted to shake hands; he ignored the disgruntled glare of the waitress; he ignored the urge to look backwards, just in case Weasley was laughing at him, or just in case he wasn't. Draco took deep breaths instead, and did not even bother to step into the street before he Disapparated.

-\\--\\--\\-

 

Malfoy Manor was in pristine condition, something Draco prided himself on immensely. Or to be perfectly accurate, he prided himself on Nibblet, whose services he had acquired despite the new regulations on elf ownership put into place by that despicable Mudblood. It was Nibblet who in turn prided herself on maintaining the estate from top to bottom, with not a single room sealed or left to fall to dust. Draco kept the entire house as his parents had kept it before him, open and prepared for whatever and whoever may come.

Not that anyoneor anything, at thatever did. Not since his grudging acquittal. Even his partners and shareholders were reluctant to visit him at home, and he made no effort to encourage them otherwise. In the first few months after the end of the war and his subsequent trial, the walls of the manor had been his refuge from the public eye, not to mention one clumsy attempt on his life. He had come to enjoy his isolation. A wizard's home was his castle, after all, and wasn't the whole point of having a castle to keep visitors and other annoyances out?

He Apparated into the usual spot in the gardens and went into the kitchenshe never bothered with the formal dining room these days, not until he got around to replacing the chairs with some that were actually padded. Nibblet appeared, as usual, from no specific location and with a bit of unidentifiable smut on the hem of her tea towel. "Master is not supposing to be home!" she squeaked at him indignantly. "Master was telling Nibblet he would eat outside today!"

"Master changed his mind," he said, and tossed her his cloak to dispose of. It briefly covered her entire body before disappearing with a snap. "I suppose you neglected to prepare me a lunch?"

"Nibblet was knowing Master would be back," she grumbled, and a salad of spring greens with sliced steak over the top materialized on the counter at Draco's elbow. There was no sign of bugs. "But Master will not be able to finish his lunch properly at this hour! Oh, Master, what is he doing to himself?"

Draco prodded the saladbleu cheese vinaigretteand then pushed it away. "I've changed my mind," he declared. "I'm not hungry."

Nibblet made a sound like a hot kettle. "Master will be eating his lunch!" she declared. "Master is too thin by half!"

Draco ignored this, and instead regarded the fuming elf carefully. Bleu cheese vinaigrette. "Nibblet," he asked, "you went to the market for this personally, didn't you?"

Nibblet's ears went flat against her skull, and her shrillness had a definite quaver in it. "If Nibblet did go to market, it was for Master's own good!" she protested. "Master does not eat enough! Nibblet would be making all Master's favorites"

Draco gestured sharply to cut her off and crouched to more-or-less eye level. "Nibblet, what did I tell you about leaving the grounds?"

Nibblet's chin wavered stubbornly for a moment. "Master is telling me not to," she finally admitted.

"Exactly," Draco snapped. "Did anyone see you buy the cheese? Or anything else?"

"N-n-no, Master!" Nibblet said, and started to hiccup. "Nibblet washic!was goodhic! Nibblet was not letting anyone see her! Not a Muggle orhic! _Hic!"_

Draco stood and patted her vaguely on the head. "Very well. Go, er, go flog yourself of something."

"Nibblet will burn up all her fingers and toeses!" she shrieked.

"Fine. Whatever."

After Nibblet had fled the kitchen, Draco prodded the salad again, and forced himself to eat a bit. Nibblet would be inconsolable anyway for having been caught disobeying him, there was no point in pushing her to the brink of breakdown by leaving a perfectly good meal to waste. And he did like bleu cheese vinaigrette.

And at least now he had an explanationNibblet must've been seen around one of the Muggle shops, no matter what precautions she may have taken. Someone must've reported an unaffiliated house-elf to the Ministry, perhaps with just enough evidence to suggest that she was in his service but not enough to mobilize the Office of House-Elf Services. But seeing as that Granger bitch was in charge of the office now, Weasley certainly would've been in a position to know what she knew, even if she couldn't legally act. There was no need to invoke the Sight to explain Weasley's foreknowledge; it was mere gossip. Nothing to worry about at all.

Besides, nobody was trying to kill him. Aside from one would-be vigilante who had broken his own neck trying to scale the manor walls with a bottle of poison some years ago, there had never been a credible threat on Draco's life. He had plenty of enemies, of coursehalf the broomstick industry, to begin with, and a third of the inmates in Azkaban. But none of the former would venture upon murder and none of the latter were capable of harming him now. There was nothing to worry about. He was perfectly safe.

Draco glanced at the clock and clapped his hands. "Nibblet, my cloak!" he shouted. He also had a bit more of the salad. His afternoon was booked solid with meetings, and he was more worried about broomwrights and goblins than about Ronald Weasley's ramblings. They probably didn't mean anything anyway, and Draco would not make a fool of himself leaping at shadows because of them. He had his pride, his business, and the Manor; nothing else truly mattered.

Certainly not Ron Weasley.


	2. Chapter 2

It was three days later and raining when Weasley found him again, and Draco had in the intervening time nearly forced the original incident from his mind. He was walking to a meeting at Gringotts, to see about financing an expansion of his company's workshopsdull work, and something one of his minions could've handled just as efficiently without Draco's intercession. Yet someone (he suspected either Nibblet or his secretary) had convinced him that it would impress the goblins if he put in a personal appearance. He had only himself to blame for the walking.

At the first sign of sprinkles he had conjured himself a sizable umbrella and charmed his shoes to remain dry. When the deluge began in earnest, he had paused outside Fortescue's to watch the less intelligent (or perhaps just magically inferior) pedestrians scurry for cover, shielding their faces and purchases with their cloaks. It was at this moment, as he watched a tired-looking young woman struggle to gather a pair of small children into a shop, that someone directly behind him and close enough to breathe his air said, "Glass."

Draco gave a yelp he would have to deny for the rest of his life and spun around. Weasley was standing behind him. He was wearing much the same sort of clothes as the last time Draco had seen him, and his jaw was shaded by shockingly dark stubble, and he still did not have a cloak. Or an umbrella, for that matter. Not that the chilly rain dripping the tip of his tremendous nose seemed to bother him in the slightest. "Weasley," Draco gasped. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Glass," he said again, as if Draco may not have heard. "Broken glass."

Draco shook his head, wondering if perhaps some rain had against all odds found its way into his ear. None had. "I think I need a bit more context than that."

Weasley tilted his head, that listening gesture again. "You didn't believe me the first time," he said. "Thought maybe you'd believe me if I told you something more."

"This has to do with my alleged death, does it?" Draco asked.

Ron nodded. "Broken glass."

"Broken glass," Draco repeated.

"Yes."

Draco glanced around. Most of the shoppers had found their cover, and the few left in the streets were scurrying about with umbrellas and cloaks and not nearly as entertaining. Weasley, however, was standing just an inch too close for comfort and talking earnest gibberish. Experimentally, Draco took a step back.

Weasley stepped forward.

Draco stepped to his left.

Weasley followed him.

Draco sighed. "If I wanted to take up waltzing, I'd hire an instructor."

"What?"

"Never mind." Draco took off up the street, and though he tried to walk quickly, Weasley had a hideously long stride and kept up easily. He also splashed puddles up Draco's legs. "So. Broken glass."

"Yes."

"What sort of glass is it?"

Weasley frowned, and concentrated intensely. "I don't know."

"Of course you don't," Draco muttered.

"What?"

"Never mind."

Weasley looked straight up into the pouring rain for a moment, and actually seemed surprised when it ran into his eyes. "I'd say more if I knew more," he suddenly blurted. "Because that might actually change something."

"But you don't know anything more."

Weasley shrugged. "It's not like a telescope. I can't actually _look._ If I could I'd be a Looker and not a Seer."

Draco refrained from making any unseemly jokes about that, despite the eyeful he was getting from the way Weasley's sodden clothes clung to his frame. He was thin, true, but his shoulders were wide and his arse had a surprisingly nice curve. But that was neither here nor there. "So one day you just happened to see that I was going to be murdered, did you?" he asked.

"Are going to be. Will be. Yes." Weasley shoved his wet hair from his eyes. "Didn't think you were going to avoid it this time, so I said something."

That made Draco stop short. _"This_ time?"

"Yeah."

"There were others?"

Weasley shoved his hand in his trouser pockets and shifted from foot to foot like a scolded child. "I see lots of things," he mumbled. "People dying, a lot. They don't always happen, though, so I don't think they're really prophecies. More like...like probablies."

"And," Draco said, "you've seen me in mortal danger before?"

Ron nodded. "A bloke tried to...to climb a wall, didn't he, and he was going to kill you, but that didn't happen. And another bloke was planning it, but he had a heart attack and fell into a hot cauldron. And a witch almost tripped you in December and you would've fallen and broke your head and died. That was a close one."

"Yet you didn't do anything about it?"

Weasley's shoulders hunched. "Couldn't."

Draco stared at him for a moment until he remembered that he didn't believe in divination. "Since when have you been a Seer, Weasley?" he asked as he continued to walk. "I don't recall any blinding moments of insight when we were in school."

"Didn't have the Sight in school," Weasley said.

"Well, you certainly didn't find a lost Inner Eye lying in the street somewhere," Draco said.

Weasley shook his head. "Hand-me-down. Like everything else."

"It runs in your family?"

"Not _my_ family."

"Then who?" Draco stopped to let a small child with far too little clothing on bound through a puddle, pursued by a harried-looking parent of some sort. "Who did you inherit it from?"

Weasley didn't respond to this; he watched the child running through the streets, and he was blinking far more than a normal person. "Five," he said softly, "Four."

"Weasley, what are you?"

"Three. Two."

Draco looked over at the child, who was quite far away now, and weaving pell-mell through the puddles.

"One."

If Draco hadn't been watching the girl, he would've missed it: one of her feet appeared to vanish into the cobbles, and she went sprawling down. At that distance he couldn't hear bones snapping, but her howl of pain was impossible to ignore. A shopkeeper rushed out and carried her to a chair outside Fortescue's; the parent caught up a moment later and draped the girl in a cloak before prodding the broken ankle with a wand.

Ron shook his head and started to walk again. He only stopped when he noticed that Draco wasn't following. "What?"

"You..." Draco shook his head. "You saw the missing cobblestone when we walked by there."

"I saw her fall when she ran in front of you."

"That was luck. A coincidence."

"It was a probably."

Draco shook his head. Still no water in his ears. He wondered if some might've somehow seeped into his brain. "Perhaps for your next trick you can foresee me making all my loan payments on time," he said brusquely. "It would certainly impress the goblins."

Weasley frowned. "Very funny," he said. "I told you it doesn't work like that."

"You can't control what you see."

"Exactly."

"You just happen to see people dying."

"Mmm-hmmm."

"And you chose to come rescue me?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well," Draco said, feeling for once that he had the upper hand. "You said yourself that you don't like me. So why try to avert my death in particular?"

Weasley stopped. Weasley frowned. Draco, obligingly, waited.

"Dunno," was the momentous declaration.

"You don't know?"

"Well," Weasley said. "Maybe I do. But I don't know if I can put it into words."

"I beg you to try."

They walked through the rain a while longerstrolled, really. Weasley kept his head down and his fists in his pockets, and the rain continued to trickle down his face and drip off the end of his nose. Draco watched this out of the corner of his eye, and as a result came precariously close to turning his own ankle twice, and once stepped on a loose cobble that sent dirty water squirting all up his legs.

"I reckon," Weasley said, and then paused.

"You do."

"I reckon it's because you're you," Weasley said uncertainly. "I mean, you were you. But not anymore. Does that make sense?"

"No," Draco said.

Weasley growled, and gestured vaguely in the air. "It'syou used to be you. I hated you. But now you're...not you. You're mates with an illegal house-elf and you sell broomsticks and stuff. That's not you. But it is you. And I reckoned...maybe you ought to get to be you for a while." He grimaced. "That sounds ridiculous. Never mind."

"What you're saying," Draco said, "is that the man I have become deserves a chance to overcome the boy I was."

"Exactly!" Weasley snapped his fingers precariously close to Draco's nose, sending up a fine spray of rain. "How'd you figure that out?"

"Because it's something only a sentimental idiot would think and only a Gryffindor would actually say."

Weasley scowled at him and hunched his shoulders again. "Fine. See if I warn you the next time you're going to die."

Draco sighed. "Weasley, I do appreciate the gesture, such as it is, but you must understand that unless you can present me with specific details, there's really not much I can do about it."

"You could hide under the bed," Weasley suggested, as if this were perfectly logical.

"I could," Draco allowed. "Butersupposed the murderer were to come into my house. Break a window, you know. I'd be a sitting duck."

Weasley nodded. "Reckon so. But if I knew anything more, then I'd tell you. Really."

"Then I suppose I shall have to go about my business until you do know something more, shan't I?"

Weasley grumbled to himself for a moment, but apparently couldn't see any flaws in Draco's logic. He slowed to a stop at the next corner, and then sighed heavily. "I don't know what I'll.... I mean if.... I don't know."

"You don't know what?"

He raked his fingers through his hair, water coursing over his knobby knuckles. "I might not be able to save you."

Draco raised an eyebrow and tilted his chin upwell, high than he normally had to in order to look Weasley in the eye. "I thought you were merely warning me."

"Warning is saving," Weasley muttered. "Saving somebody."

"Is that why you've been following me through the rain for the past..." Draco checked his pocket watch. "Past ten minutes?"

Weasley shrugged. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

"Yes, because I'm certain that there is an ambush waiting for me on the front steps of Gringotts," Draco said.

Weasley shrugged, as if to say _Maybe._

Draco was not entirely certain what possessed him to do what he did next. Perhaps it was a combination of boredom, fatigue, curiosity, and dampness, transmuted in dramatic alchemical fashion by the direction the conversation had turned. He was certainly not any more convinced of the truth of Weasley's dire predictions, although after the trick with the falling girl he was perhaps slightly more inclined to accept the possibility of a method to this madness. Nor was Draco magnanimous by nature, as his business partners would've been quick to point out. Yet he was intrigued. Totally skeptical, yes, but also honorable, after his own Slytherin fashion. He had manners. He had an image to keep up. He was going to miss his appointment with the goblins by a mile anyway.

And, as Nibblet would likely be the first to point out later, Weasley was _soaked._

"Come along, then," he declared, and gingerly laid a hand on Weasley's elbow.

Weasley leapt out of the way as if Draco were on fire. "Come where?" he asked.

"Whether I like it or not, Weasley, you have indeed warned me, which is a service," Draco said, trying to sound bored and put-upon. "It is only proper that I repay you for it."

"What do you mean?" Weasley sounded deeply suspicious, but he eased back within range of Draco's hand, which was better than nothing.

"Join me for tea," Draco declared. "I insist upon it."

"You're serious."

"And you are wet, and it would be poor judgement of me to let you die of pneumonia when there's a murderer on the loose." Draco reached for Weasley's arm again, with a slower and more deliberate gesture; Weasley let him take it, and the wet wool jumper squelched in his grip. Beneath it Weasley's arm was very thin, and Draco could feel tiny shivers racing along his skin. When Weasley didn't protest further, Draco Apparated both of them back to the Manor.

-\\--\\--\\-

 

After Nibblet had overcome her shock at Draco's unexpected appearance for tea, she proceeded to dote on Weasley in nauseating fashion. While Draco changed out of his business robes, his guest was hustled into one of the various spare bedrooms, and emerged in clothes that were not only dry, but mended and distinctly cleaner than before.

Nibblet brought more biscuits, sandwiches and hors d'oeuvres than Draco could've eaten by himself in a month, but Weasley managed to make appreciable dent in them all by himself; apparently his thinness wasn't caused by lack of appetite. As he inhaled the food, Draco served himself and then poured Weasley a cup. "Whuh yu ga so meh woo?" Weasley asked, with a fine spray of crumbs.

"I'm afraid I don't speak peasant, Weasley; you'll have to swallow first."

He did. "Why've you got so many rooms? There must be a million just on this level."

"The manor can house over a hundred people comfortably," Draco said.

"But _why?"_

"Guests visit. Family visits."

"No one ever visits you, though," Weasley said, and popped two cucumber sandwiches in his mouth at a go.

"One must always be prepared," Draco said, a little annoyed. "How do you know so much about me, anyway?"

Weasley shrugged, but rather than trying to speak again, he tapped the center of his forehead.

"One would think the Sight would concern itself more with the grand sweep of history than with my entertaining habits," Draco grumbled.

"Told you, I don't control it," Weasley said. He added enough sugar to his tea to make Draco's teeth ache in sympathy. "Just happens."

"So you've said." Draco almost asked why it was Just Happening to him, in particular, but he wasn't certain he wanted to wander down another ethical-philosophical back road just yet. Instead he said, "You never did explain from whom you 'inherited' the Sight, by the way."

Weasley sipped his tea and then set it aside; he folded his arms around himself almost as if he were suddenly cold, though Nibblet had built a roaring fire in the hearth. He stared at the carpet for several minutes before he said very quietly, "Trelawney."

Draco snorted. "Surely you're joking."

But Weasley's face looked haunted, and he hunched his shoulders in as he spoke. "I...in the end...you were in hospital by then, or hiding, but...they got me. You know who. When they took Hogwarts."

Draco set aside his own teacup and laced his fingers together, resting over his knee, to disguise a sudden tremor. He was quite suddenly no longer thirsty. "I see."

"They put us in the dungeons," Weasley continued, though his voice was dropping steadily closer to a whisper. "Anyone who knew enough magic to fight back. Only there weren't enough cells...they'd killed Filch already and they didn't know where to find any cells. So they put me in with Trelawney and Flitwick, only Flitwick was already dead by then and they just hadn't taken him away yet."

He paused here, and it took tremendous effort for Draco to swallow hard and prompt him. "Whatwhat happened to Trelawney?

"She was sick...she might've been a little mad, too," Ron mumbled. "Everyone was going mad down there. She kept telling me that it was a shame she didn't have any children, that it was a mistake, because there would be no one to pass her Sight along to. She said it would be a shame if her Sight died with her. And she said she would give it to me, if I wanted it, so it could go on."

Ron was silent for a long time, and he stared intensely at Draco's silver-plated tea service, but something about his eyes said that he wasn't seeing cream and sugar.

"I didn't want it," he whispered, and swallowed. "She gave it to me anyway."

He fell silent, and it was a long time before Draco was able to force his voice into action again. He wanted to say something pithy and pointed and a bit sarcastic to clear the room of this sudden haze of bad memories and deep emotions; when nothing came to mind, he found himself stammering, "II'm sorry."

Ron started, and then shook his head fiercely, without unclasping his arms. "Nodon't. 'Snot your fault. Somebody else started that, and you're just stuck with him."

Draco blinked at him, opened his mouth and then shut it again. That actually seemed to sum things up fairly well.

Nibblet slunk into the room, picking at the bandages on her fingers. "Is Mr. Wheezy feeling sick?" she asked Draco in a whisper. "Nibblet can make Mr. Wheezy some soup"

"I think Mr. WheeMr. Weasley merely needs to rest," Draco said. "Show him to a bedroom, would you?"

"Which one, Master?"

"Oh, they're all the same, aren't they?"

Nibblet tugged on Ron's sleeve, and he started, just as he had when Draco had first grasped his elbow in the street. "Mr. Wheezy is wanting to lie down now," she said firmly.

Ron nodded without speaking, and eventually he even unfolded all those scrawny limbs and stood. Nibblet took his hand as if she were leading a child, albeit a child nearly three times her own height, and Draco watched them walk out of the room together.

He knew, of course, about the occupation of Hogwartsit had been organized by his own dear Uncle Rodolphus, after all. The Ministry had allowed itself to be bogged down in a protracted siege of the school, and it had ended in a bloodbath. He himself had been in hospital at the time, recovering from his part in the destruction of a particularly tricky Horcrux, but he had heard the stories later. The younger students had simply been barricaded in their dormitories and left to starve. The restolder students, teachers, even some of the house-elveshad been tortured or killed; the Aurors who eventually stormed the place found the bodies stacked like lumber. The particular details had been too horrific for the _Daily_ _Prophet_ to print, but they circulated anyway in the backs of pubs and the dark of night: muddied, perhaps, and a bit confused, but not exaggerated. Never exaggerated. They were already as gruesome as they could possibly get_._

Draco had heard those stories, bit by bit. He had told himself that they didn't mean anything to him. Hogwarts hadn't been quite the same without Dumbledore, true, but the Death Eaters hadn't used a Vanishing Cabinet this time, and the staff had had plenty of warning. He had already thrown in his lot with the Forces of Light and Warm Fuzzies by that time, had been fighting against the ones who had done such things, or rather, he was recuperating from that fighting. He hadn't known. It wasn't really his problem. It had nothing to do with him.

Of course, he'd never tried this line of reasoning on anyone who'd actually _been_ there.

"Master is not looking well at all," Nibblet scolded from behind him, and he started. That only made her frown more deeply. "Is Master needing to lie down, too?"

"No," Draco said briskly. "No, of course not."

Nibblet planted herself at his feet with her arms crossed. "Is Master telling the truth?"

"Yes, you miserable excuse for a doorstop!"

"Ah," she said. "Master must be feeling well or Master would not be insulting Nibblet so."

But she still cleared the tea service away, and when Draco went to his office he found a bottle of bourbon on the desk. He poured himself a shot of this, but after long contemplation he didn't drink it. Because, he decided, it was just as Ron had said. Someone else had set those events into motion. Draco was just stuck with cleaning up after him.


	3. Chapter 3

Nibblet flatly refused to bring Draco dinner in his study, and when he went to the kitchen he found Weasley tucking into a goat cheese tart with abandon. He did not look as fragile as he had earlier, and there was a large pillow crease on his face that confirmed he had slept the afternoon away. "What are you still doing here?" Draco asked by way of greeting.

Ron swallowed loudly, then belched a little. "Paisley," he said.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were playing the Random Word Game."

Nibblet slammed down Draco's own plate with considerable force and volume. "Master is ought to mind his manners," she said. "Master has not had a guest in these three years!"

"Nibblet," Draco said casually, "when was the last time I told you shut up?"

"This morning, Master."

"Then why are you still talking?"

Ron raised his eyebrows. "Three years?"

When Draco didn't respond, Nibblet answered. "Three years, Mr. Wheezy, and poor Nibblet is all alone with Master's grumpy self," she said mournfully as she hauled the oven door open to check the next course. "Master does not go out, Master does not bring friends in, Master is all alone with only Nibblet to care for him. 'Tis very sad."

"Elf," Draco growled. "Talking. No more."

"Sorry, Malfoy, I don't think she speaks pillock," Weasley said.

Draco set down his fork and rubbed his temples. "This is why I don't bring guests around, Nibblet," he said. "I have a hard enough time resisting the urge to hex _you_."

"Master does not hex Nibblet," she said cheerfully. "Master has to catch her first!"

Ron snorted, choked a little, and quickly swigged down his winean extremely expensive pinot grigio, Draco noted. Nibblet had been spending more time in the market than he had thought. "Where did you _find_ her?" Ron asked. "I mean, just in general"

"Granger does not realize how strong the traditions of the elves of Britain are," Draco said. "There are probably far more elves off her precious Registers than in them, and they'd rather wear clothes than have any Ministry quill-scratcher 'advocating' for them."

"'Tis a disgrace!" Nibblet agreed vehemently.

Ron shrugged. "This, um, whatever this is, this is good. What is it?"

"I somehow doubt you actually want to know," Draco said.

This didn't discourage him in the slightest; he finished off two slices of tart and all but inhaled the braised pork loin that comprised the next course. Only when he deemed it would not be a choking hazard did Draco ask, "What do you mean by 'paisley,' by the way?"

"Mmh?"

"You said 'paisley' earlier."

"Ah." Ron wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Paisley. Right. I saw it."

"Not in this house, you didn't."

"No. I _Saw_ it."

"Oh." Draco sipped his wine. "So I'm to be killed by an assassin with horrible fashion sense, am I?"

Nibblet dropped a whisk loudly to the floor. "Master is going to die?" she asked, looking stricken.

"Of course not," Draco said loudly. "It'seran inside joke. Tell her, Weasley."

Ron blinked, and frowned. "Er..."

"Master does not tell jokes," Nibblet said, clutching her tea towel to her chest. "Master does not have a sense of humor."

"I have a perfectly good sense of humor," Draco mumbled, and he nudged Ron under the table with his knee. "Don't I?"

Ron swallowed hard. "Nibblet," he said gravely, "I swear to you that Malfoy isn't going to be murdered."

Nibblet's ears rose a fraction. "Mr. Wheezy swears?"

"On my honor as a Gryffindor," Ron said, and placed his hand over his heart.

"And we all know that the only thing greater than Gryffindor honor is Gryffindor stupidity," Draco added, "so that's something you can count on, Nibblet."

"Master is being rude," she sniffed.

"Naw," Ron said. "'Cause we all know the only thing bigger than Slytherin manners is...oh, wait, _everything _is bigger than Slytherin manners"

"Mind _your_ manners, Weasley, or I'll throw you out," Draco said.

Nibblet sniffed at him. "Master will do no such thing!" she said, a bit more shrilly that she really needed to. "Mr. Wheezy, you is really going to protect him?"

"Any way I can," Ron said solemnly.

Draco cleared his throat. "Nibblet. Dessert?"

They didn't speak of murder again until after dinner, roughly the point when Draco realized that his usually after-meal routine (a glass of wine and a trashy novel in the library) was not amenable to entertaining a guest, not even a Weasley. Ron followed him into the library, but while Draco hesitated just inside the door, pondering his options, Ron headed straight for the hearthrug and sprawled out in front of the fireplace. Which did not, currently, have any fire in it. Draco watched him for a moment, but in the absence of any sudden movements, he decided it was safe to take his usual seat on a divan and at least pick up his book. Perhaps Ron would just fall asleep againhis belly was visibly straining his belt, after all.

But instead, Ron said, "So. Paisley."

"So you say."

"Paisley."

"Any particular color?"

Ron shrugged. "Didn't notice."

"Hmm."

"Do you own anything paisley?"

Draco lowered his novel and glared at him. "You did not just ask me that question."

Ron shrugged again. "I'm trying to, to _investigate._ Like Harry does."

"Mmm, yes. I thought you were both going to go into Auroring?"

"Couldn't take the exam," Ron said, then, "Not even some ugly pajamas your weird great aunt bought you?"

"My weird great aunt keeled over dead shortly before my fifth birthday," Draco said. "Mother served me cake, gave me my presents, and then took me to the wake."

"So that's a no, then."

"Correct." Draco tried to go back his novelthe plucky young heroine had just conveniently overheard the villains discussing their dastardly plans in detailbut a thought suddenly struck him. "Do _you_ own any paisley?"

Ron's head popped up. "Eh? Me?"

"Just a bit of speculation."

He shook his head and lay back on the rug. "I don't see myself, Malfoy. Never do."

"Why not?"

But Ron's attention had wandered. "Glass and paisley and you," he mumbled. "Maybe they mean something together? Can glass be paisley?"

"I suppose it's possible," Draco said. "Is there a reason you're aspiring to become a boy detective?"

"I promised to save you," he said. "Reckoned I ought to get started on that right away."

"Weasley, one, you promised a house-elf."

"Still a promise."

"Two," Draco said, "while you seem to be quite certain that I am in need of rescue, I am still not entirely convinced."

Ron sat up, folded his arms loosely over his knees, and stared at Draco with the same piercing intensity as he had the day in the restaurant. "You aren't?"

"No," Draco said, and willed himself not to look away. "You've provided more details, yes, but they're not exactly _useful _details, are they?"

"But they are details," Ron said. "I actually thought they'd be quite convincing."

Draco blinked at him. "Paisley and broken glass are supposed to be convincing?"

"Well," Ron said, "the way I see it, if I was going to try to trick you, I'd be making up all kinds of real specific stuff about, I dunno, tall dark strangers and omens in the stars. And knives." He nodded to himself. "Knives are pretty scary."

"You're saying," Draco said slowly, "that I ought to believe you because you _aren't_ being more convincing?"

"Well, yeah, and also" Ron stretched out on his stomach now. "Why would I lie?"

Draco turned back to his book. "This could be some sort of elaborate joke. In fact, I suspect that at any moment I'll be ambushed by Potter and those misbegotten heathens you call brothers, pointing and laughing."

Ron shook his head into the rug. "Twins are busy," he mumbled. "And Harry doesn't laugh anymore."

"Still," Draco said. "I have no intention of becoming the butt of a public joke. People will begin to think I'm gullible enough to believe anything."

"So you _do_ believe me. Whether you want to or not."

Ron looked up at him, eyes wide and unblinking and somehow ferocious. Draco looked back. "Let's just say I'm taking a conservative position."

Ron snorted and curled up on the rug. "You believe me," he said, and promptly went to sleep.

-\\--\\--\\-

 

Draco left him like that, snoozing before the unlit hearth, and when he went to sleep he instructed Nibblet to put Ron in a bedroom for the night by any means necessary. When Draco awoke the next morning, however, Ron had vanished from the Manor entirely, and not even Nibblet had seen him depart. An ever-so-tiny part of Draco's mind considered going to look for him, but it was squashed by the practical complications inherent in the plan. He would simply have to wait for him to reappear on his own. Well, not _wait,_ exactly, but...keep a weather eye out, perhaps. Yes, that was better. There was no waiting, because there was nothing to wait _for_.

Draco had not anticipated going into the office that day, but since he had stood up the goblins, he supposed he had ought to at least make an appearance and suffer the wrath of his staff, such as it was. Most of the staff of the Falcon Broomstick Corporation feared for their jobs too much to even contradict Draco, much less actively complain to him, but at least if he were physically present they could mumble and give him evil looks. And if, in the worst case scenario, any angry goblins descended on the office, Draco supposed he could divert them to his office for a short while. Besides, he had filing to do.

When he arrived at the company head office in Hogsmeade, however, he didn't find his employees in a state of seething agitation, or even midweek doldrums mixed with distant longing for the weekend. In fact, the word that he felt would best describe was _gobsmacked._ Many plodded through the halls with wide, unblinking eyes, while other scurried around corners and whispered to one another like schoolchildren. Nearly none of them even acknowledged Draco's existence, and that alone was enough to raise his guard. When he finally came to the front door of own office, it became very clear what had caused his employees to behave so.

Draco's secretary was almost cowering behind her desk, eyes wide, a hideous smile plastered onto her face. Harry Potter, dressed in his Auror's uniform, was leaning over the desk, shouting at her.

"don't go and _find_ him, and bring him to me, I swear to God I will take this place apart brick by bloody _brick_ until I find a reason to arrest everyone last one of you!" was the current threat. His voice was flat, but his face was very red, and he was gripping the edge of the secretary's desk so hard it was a wonder the wood hadn't cracked.

As Draco removed his gloves, he said casually, "That would be a bit excessive, Potter, even for you."

Potter turned on him. Though wand was still tucked securely in his robes, away from his hands, Draco didn't even consider pocketing his own. "You," Potter said flatly, then: "Where was he?"

"You can stand there flinging pronouns at me all day, Potter, but I suggest we'd accomplish a great deal more if you were to behave like a civilized member of the species," Draco said tersely, and brushed past Potter into his office. He held his breath for the moment when they were very nearly touching, waiting for somethinghe wasn't sure what. It didn't come, though, and he wondered if perhaps Potter had left behind the boy he'd been as well.

Potter did shut the door behind himself rather most forcefully than necessary. "We need to talk," he snapped, and sank his fingers into the back of a chair.

"Please, sit down," Draco said tonelessly. "Can I offer you a drink? If we're going to snarl at one another, we might as well be comfortable doing it." He retrieved the flask from his desk drawer and conjured a couple of glasses.

Potter made no move to sit. "I want to know what the hell you've been doing with Ron."

Draco slopped a bit of gin over the side of the flask, blotting something that looked important. Dammit. "Nothing that I'm aware of," he said, "though perhaps my attention has wandered from time to time."

"So you admit that you've been talking to him?" Now Potter did sit, and leaned forward with an unpleasant light in his eyes. It wasn't the battle-look that Draco had seen on his face once or twice, but it was uncomfortably close.

"Potter, _Weasley_ has been talking to _me,_" Draco said. "I haven't had a great deal of choice in the matter."

"You've been seen together by half a hundred people," Potter said. "Talking to him. I want to know what about."

"Is this a criminal matter?" Draco asked.

"It's family business," Potter said.

"Really? Then I suppose all that bombast about arresting my entire company was just a friendly jest."

A muscle in Potter's jaw jumped visibly, and he narrowed his eyes. "I just want to know what you are doing with Ron," he said slowly and firmly.

"Tell me, have you tried asking him?"

That broke something; Potter pounded his fist on the desk, nearly upsetting Draco's drink again. "Goddammit, Malfoy, you know as well as I do that doesn't work!"

"I do?" Draco asked, blinking.

Potter stared at him, and his face cycled through several emotions: anger and confusion and surprise. It settled in a sort of blankness, and Potter slumped in his chair. "You don't know, do you?"

"Enlighten me, I beg you."

Potter looked away for a moment, rubbed his face with his hand. Now that some of the righteous indignation had gone out of him, he looked smaller, and surprisingly old. "Ron...isn't well," he said weakly. "Not very well at all."

"He seems healthy enough to me."

Potter scowled, but under the anger in his eyes was an emotion Draco wasn't entirely sure he could place. "Malfoy, do you have any idea what happened to Ron in the war?"

"I've heard," Draco said quietly, and found his eyes drawn to his drink. "He told me some of it."

Potter removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "He was tortured," he said flatly. "The Aurors thought he was dead when they found him. He nearly did die. And when he woke up... "

"He claims to be a Seer."

Potter sighed heavily. "He's...he's not all there anymore, Malfoy. Up here." He tapped the side of his head.

"He's seemed perfectly lucid to me," Draco said. "At least, no odder than Luna Lovegood's usual drivel."

"He has good days," Potter said, almost grudgingly. "Some better than others. A couple of times we've even thought he was really improving, but...he spent a month in St. Mungo's last Christmas, and since they let him come home it's been pretty much the same."

Draco shook his head. "I will allow that Ron is a tad more eccentric than I recalled, and he seems to have a certain deficit in the personal care department, but insane? No. I haven't seen it."

Potter shook his head fiercely. "You don't get it, Malfoy. He wandered off yesterday afternoon and never came home"

"Of course not," Draco said, "he came home with me."

Potter's head snapped up. "He _what?"_

"Came to the Manor. With me." Draco added, "_willingly._ He was fairly tolerable company, for a Gryffindor."

"And when did he leave this morning?" Potter asked.

"I'm...not certain," Draco admitted. "Some time before seven."

"One of his brothers found him wandering around Diagon Alley at four o'clock," Potter said. "He was talking about you."

Draco shrugged. "I don't see anything particularly disturbing about that."

"He's claiming to see the future!"

"I know that," Draco said. "He's been advising me on my own impending death."

Potter's eyes bulged behind his glasses. "He's _what?"_

"Advising me," Draco repeated. "Do you need your hearing checked?"

"Oh, no," Potter said, "I see it now. I understand."

Draco was glad somebody did.

"You're encouraging him," Potter declared, and thrust his finger at Draco. "That's why he keeps coming back to you, you're playing into this...this _delusion_."

"You think it's a delusion?"

Draco asked the question mildly, but he couldn't deny a little stab of pleasure to see a vein throb in Potter's temple. Perhaps the boys they'd been weren't gone entirely; perhaps they still wandered about, like ghosts, chins upthrust in anger. Potter's shoulders went rigid, and he asked, "What, you believe him?"

Draco shrugged. "I'm open to the possibility," he said, despite his own argument with Ron the night before. "Particularly since my own well-being would appear to hinge on his accuracy."

Potter snorted. "You're really taking him seriously."

"I'm planning for all contingencies."

"Malfoy, listen to someone who actually knows Ron," Potter said. "He doesn't know anything about anyone killing you. He doesn't even know what day of the week it is half the time."

Draco shrugged. "A prophet is never honored in his own hometown."

That seemed to be the last nudge. Potter leapt to his feet and pounded his fists on the desk, upsetting the half-full glass of gin completely. "Listen to me, Malfoy," he snarled. "I don't think I can say it any more clearly than this. Stay away from Ron. Don't talk to him, don't take him to your bloody Manor and for Merlin's sake, don't encourage him. You're only going to make things worse."

"If he's in such dire condition, Potter, perhaps _you_ need to keep a better watch on him before you come running to shout at _me,"_ Draco said.

"Leave him alone," Potter said coldly. "Just...leave him alone. You don't belong in this."

"Tell him to leave _me_ alone," Draco said, but Potter was already slamming the door behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day was a Saturday, and Draco planned to spend the day at the races. Crup racing was no longer the honorable tradition it once had been, but Draco was fond of it, perhaps because so few others were. He needed little encouragement to venture out that day; after his meeting with Potter he had felt inexplicably restless. He blamed the turn of the weather, which had grown suddenly sunny and warm.

Of course, the day Draco chose to spend at the track was gray and foul. He arrived in midmorning, before the first heats had begun, and made his customary wagers. He held his chin high and ignored the looks and stares that he still drew, after all these years, as the wizarding world's most infamous murderer and most celebrated traitor. Aside from a few grubby dwarves selling programs, though, no one tried to hinder his way to his seat. He swatted the dwarves with his walking stick and chose a spot near the base of the judging stand, where he could clearly see the start and finish lines. The first group of Crups were just being lead out; they looked mangy and a bit underfed, and a few had to be dragged growling to their post positions.

It was then, as he watched a spirited little bitch snap at a trainer's fingers, that someone directly behind Draco said clearly and distinctly, "Edam."

Draco may have yelped a little, and he certainly did leap to his feet and spin, wand in hand. But it was merely Ron, occupying a seat that Draco would've sworn was empty moments earlier, and looking rather mangy and underfed himself. His hair was dirty, his eyes shadowed, and his hollow cheeks were covered with a layer of auburn hair that was beginning to approach an actual beard. Ron sat hunched forward, his folded arms braced on his knees, and stared; his eyes were pointed in Draco's general direction, but Draco would not have bet anything that they actually saw him.

With Potter's tirade on his mind, Draco lowered his wand and straightened his robes. "Weasley," he said. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

_"Edam,"_ Ron said again, almost urgently, but his eyes did focus a little, and he blinked. "I had to tell you."

"Tell me what, exactly?"

"I..." Ron suddenly looked down at his hands, which looked very white and cold. He rubbed them together absently. "I don't know."

"In that case, thank you for sharing." Draco sat down again and arranged his cloak around himself for maximum warmth.

Ron leaned forward, over the back of the seat next to him. "You said you wanted more," he said. "And I promised."

"You promised a house-elf who does not officially exist," Draco said, "and I specifically asked for something _useful._"

"Sorry."

A horn sounded, the gates opened with a bang, and the Crups shot after a plush rabbit which someone had charmed to fly. It was over in a matter of seconds, and Draco found he did not particularly care which animal won.

"I..." Ron rubbed his eyes. "Edam is in Holland, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I have no immediate plans for holiday, so you can rest easy."

"I'm _trying,_ Malfoy," Ron said loudly. "And it's for your benefit, so if you're not going to help, then shut up."

Draco sighed, and watched the next round of Crups parade past. "I shouldn't even be talking to you," he said. "Potter may try to arrest me."

"You talked to Harry?" Ron asked, his voice going high.

"More like he shouted at me," Draco said. He watched Ron's expression carefully from the corner of his eye. "He seems to be under the impression that you're insane."

Ron looked down at his hands. "Harry...Harry doesn't understand some things."

"Apparently not."

They watched the next group of Crups race by, double tails lashing the air. Ron suddenly clambered over the back of the bench to sit next to Draco, rubbing his hands in the chilly morning. "I, er." He cleared his throat. "I didn't expect to find you here."

"I never expect to find you anywhere."

Ron scowled. "I mean...Nibblet said you haven't had a friend in three years."

In truth, Draco thought it had been much, much longer than that, but he didn't particularly feel like expounding on the question. "When I formed Falcon Broomsticks, I had my investors for dinner. It was the initial reason I acquired Nibblet's services."

"And nobody since then?"

Draco shrugged. "Not unless I count you."

That seemed to surprise Ron a bit; he cocked his head in that listening gesture, but jumped badly when the next heat of Crups took off running. "Oh," he said. "Erm. Why broomsticks?"

Draco raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you suddenly that interested in my affairs, Weasley?"

"I'm investigating," Ron said mulishly, with a hunch to his shoulders. "Maybe it's one of your investors. Are any of them Dutch?"

"Weasley," Draco said, "you are not going to deduce anything useful from broken glass, paisley, and Edam. It's impossible."

"It's more than we knew before."

"Since when were you and I a 'we'?"

"Since you had me over for tea, I reckon."

Draco sighed. He should've learned his lesson with Nibbletwhen he brought home strange creatures, they lingered. "Fine," he said. "Just so long as you don't expect me to actually do anything about it."

Ron's eyes dropped to his lap, and he blinked fiercely several times, then shook his head as though he had water in his ears. The started gates cracked open, the Crups barked, and Ron started.

"Weasley?"

"Um. Never mind," he said, and shook his head again. He squinted up at the sky, which had lightened to a uniform pearly gray. "I think I have to go."

"Hold on a moment," Draco said. He was still mindful of Potter's threats, but at this point he supposed the damage was done. "I've a few questions I'd like to ask you."

"Huh? Oh." Ron shrugged, and looked at his hands, which were dangling between his knees. "Go on, then."

Draco paused for a moment, considering what questions to ask, what questions would actually get answered. Finally he settled on one that sounded just academic enough not to be threatening. "You said you never see visions of yourself," he said. "Why is that?"

Ron's head ducked so low that Draco could scarcely see his face. "Don't know," he said, then, "No. I think...I'm not actually mad, you know."

"You're not?"

"I don't think so." Ron swallowed. "'Cause being mad, that's when you see stuff that isn't there. I only see what's there. I see _everything_ that's there. And some stuff that might be there. But I never see anything that's not, or won't."

Draco nodded as if this made sense; when Ron didn't elaborate, he prompted him. "And so you don't see yourself because...?"

"I just told you," Ron said, then stood up. "Edam. I don't know what the hell it's got to do with paisley glass, but Edam."

"I'm afraid I don't understand"

"I have to go!" Ron blurted. "I justI'm sorrydon't go to Holland, all right, just don't, because I don't want you to diebut I have to go"

"Weasley, wait" Draco reached out for Ron's sleevehe had actually over-dressed for the weather today, a heavy coat long frays at the cuffsRon danced out of the way. "Weasley, just one more question."

Ron stopped in the aisle and squeezed his eyes shut. He was wobbling a little bit, weaving in place as though the bleachers under his feet were rolling like the sea. He wrapped his arms around himself. "One," he said softly.

Draco looked at him for a moment, thinking about everything Potter had said. "What day of the week is it?" he asked.

Ron's eyes snapped open. He stopped wobbling. He stared at Draco for a moment. "That is the stupidest question I've ever heard," he declared. And, shoulders hunched, he strode away, leaving Draco alone at the races.

-\\--\\--\\-

 

Something must've happened after that, though, because nearly a week passed during which Draco saw neither hide nor ginger hair of his "advisor." During that week, Draco did not break his usual routines, except to fling blunt objects at Nibblet when she asked if Mr. Wheezy would be returning. Oh, he may have glanced over his shoulder a bit more often. He may have had trouble concentrating on his reading. He may have scanned crowds for red hair a time or two. When his secretary arrived to work wearing a paisley scarf, he may have even ordered her to burn it. But life went on in its rhythms. Nothing had changed.

And that, Draco came to suspect, was the problem.

"Addison has a contract for you sign regarding an order of maple," Draco's new secretarythe one with the scarf had quit in hystericstold him during an impromptu morning review.

"Have him send it up here," Draco ordered her. "He's got legs, hasn't he?"

"Yessir," the secretary said, and sorted through a stack of memos and correspondence. "Er. Mr. Barker of Flyte and Barker sent a long note gloating about having got Pinkley under contract for ten years, I sent your standard insult letterer. Mr. Bristlecombe at Cleansweep is holding a garden party, I've already prepared your acceptance and decline letters?"

"I'll think about it," he said, "Next item."

In an extraordinary movement, the new secretary managed to completely reshuffle her stack of paper and parchment without it dashing to the floor. Draco decided he really must learn her name. "Madame Short at Comet has offered to sell us seventy pounds of unused bristles, I copied the letter to Mr. FawcettMiss Hooke at the _Daily Prophet_ had confirmed our latest adverts, andand that's all."

"Thank you," Draco said. "Now get rid of all that and take a letter for me."

The secretary, in two swift motions of her wand, banished the paperwork to her desk and Summoned a Quick-Quotes Quill and a role of parchment. When the quill was hovering at the ready, Draco cleared his throat. "Testing, testing...make certain this bit gets chopped off the top." The words bloomed accurately on the page, though the script was a bit florid for his liking. "Right. Begin letter:

"To Mr. R. Weasley..."

Draco stopped there. It occurred to him that he really didn't know where Ron lived. He supposed he could direct the letter to the architectural nightmare known at the Burrow, butgiven that most of Clan Weasley seemed to think that Ron was madhe didn't entirely trust them not to go through a personal letter, or even to toss it out unopened. Besides, if Potter thought he had malicious designs on Ron's mental health, he might show up at the office and start arresting people all willy-nilly. Then again, if Potter was already suspicious...

"To Mr. H. Potter, Auror's Division, et cetera, et cetera, from Mr. D. D. Malfoy, president, Falcon Broomstick Company, et cetera, in re..." Here he paused for a moment, thinking. "In regards to my recent advisor. While I maintain my previous position that I am in no way, shape or form responsible for his actions, I am delighted to inform you that I have not been harassed by him all week. Good show on your part. However, as I also maintain my previous stance of conservative caution, I would appreciate a means of maintaining contact with him should he have any further advice for me. Please reply post haste. Regards, Draco D. Malfoy." He glanced at the scroll, which was covered in cross-outs. "Clean that up and post it. I'm going home for the day."

"Yes, Mr. Malfoy."

Nibblet prepared something devious and Italian for his lunch, and he walked in the gardens a bit: the beds were showing signs of spring and the Manor itself was trim and snug behind its wall. From without, Draco supposed there was no sign that most of the rooms stood empty. Pristine, of course, Nibblet wouldn't stand for less, but empty and unused. Draco found he couldn't remember the last time he had ventured into the whole east wing.

_Stop that,_ he chided himself. When had he turned so melancholy? It simply had to be the weather; the warming days and ever-increasing sunshine were bound to make any man introspective and gloomy. He needed to stay in more.

As if cued, Nibblet appeared at his side with a snap, eyes bulging rather more than usual. "Master!" she squeaked. "Master has a visitor!"

"Excuse me?"

"A visitor at the gate!" Nibblet twisted the hem of her tea towel in her fists. "Is Master in trouble?"

"Not unless you've gone and made a scene at the village market again," Draco said, heading towards the front of the house. When Nibblet wailed in fear, he added, "Oh, don't get hysterical, I'm certain it's just a...merely some...er..."

"Master has not had an unexpected visitor in six years," Nibblet whispered. "Nibblet is reading that in the papers."

"It's probably nothing," Draco snapped. "Now go hide in the wine cellar."

Until he saw Harry Potter standing at the gates of the Manor, Draco suspected his visitor to be some deluded Muggle who had wandered up from the combe below. When he saw Harry Potter standing at the gates, he slowed his stride and tried to reach unobtrusively for his wand. Potter didn't look particularly outraged, though; his face was grim, but his arms were folded across his chest, and the only thing in his hand was a crumpled bit of parchment. Draco stopped several feet away from the gate, giving himself plenty of room to dodge, just in case. "Good afternoon, Potter," he called out. "I hope you aren't going to try to arrest me again."

"Oh, don't worry," Potter said in a curiously restrained voice. "I'm here on family business." He waved the piece of parchment at Draco, who finally recognized it. Potter must've Apparated straight to the Manor after getting the letter.

"Ah, yes," Draco said. "I suppose now is when you once again castigate me for allowing your beloved brother-in-law to talk to me."

Potter smiled slightly. Draco had never liked that smile. "No, actually," Potter said. "I'm here to take you to see him."

"See him?" Draco said. "Potter, I merely wanted his address"

"I really think you should pay him a visit," Potter said. "It might be enlightening."

Draco folded his own arms over his chest. "I have no patience for ambiguities, Potter. Either say what you mean or leave me in peace. With an address."

Potter leaned against the gate, however, looping his arms through the curls of iron. "You're depending on a self-proclaimed Seer for safety advice and you say you don't like ambiguity?" he asked.

"Ron is not ambiguous," Draco said. "As a matter of fact, he's almost uselessly specific."

"Since when," Potter asked, "was he 'Ron' to you?"

For some reason that stung, and Draco turned away from the gate. "If you're not going to be helpful, Potter, then I don't intend to waste my time on you. Good afternoon."

"Malfoy," Potter said, "trust me. You really want to see this."

Draco paused. The first time he'd ever heard Potter say _trust me,_ it had saved his life. The second time, it had probably saved the wizarding world. He glanced back over his shoulder; Potter was still leaning against the gate, and his hands were fisted.

Draco concluded if Potter wanted kill him, there were far more straightforward ways to go about it. "All right," he said briskly. "To where are we venturing?"

Potter held out his arm. "I'll Apparate us," he said.

"I'm perfectly capable of Apparating myself," Draco protested.

Potter raised that eyebrow again. _Trust me._

Draco sighed, and laid a reluctant hand on Potter's arm. "Just so long as you're not taking me to the Netherlands."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Potter did not take him to the Netherlands; Potter took him directly to the waiting room of St. Mungo's. When Draco's head had cleared from the Apparation, he recognized his surroundings and snorted. "This was the big secret? Be still my heart."

"C'mon," Potter said quietly, and headed for the lifts. Draco had no wish to be seen trotting at Harry Potter's heels, but in the crowded lobby it was a bit of a necessity. At least the bustle prevented anyone from recognizing them; the only thing worse than being identified as the infamous Draco Malfoy, he thought, would be to be so identified in the midst of a sea of Potter's devoted admirers.

Despite the packed lobby, the lifts were practically idle, and as they got on Draco noticed Potter hit the button for the fourth floor. "So what exactly is the purpose of this little excursion?" Draco asked.

"You wanted to see Ron, didn't you?" Potter asked.

"I see," Draco said, eyeing Potter carefully. He stood with his fists stuffed into his pockets, and Draco couldn't make eye contact, not even in the reflection on the sterile steel doors. "And what has Rhas Weasley done to land himself in St. Mungo's loving care?"

Potter snorted and shook his head a bit, but didn't answer.

The lift disgorged them on the designated floor, and Potter led the way past the all-too-familiar wards for curse wounds and hex marks, to a sealed set of double doors at the end of a long and unpleasant corridor. The Janus Thickey Ward. "He's in here?" Draco asked, and frowned when he couldn't keep his voice entirely bored.

"He checks in and out," Potter said, and knocked on the doors. "He's got a bed reserved for when he needs it."

"That's...convenient."

A part of Draco wanted to keep insisting that this was some sort of elaborate joke, that when he stepped inside the ward there would be a large group of various Gryffindors waiting to mock him, Ron in the lead. Or perhaps it was a bizarre murder plot, and any minute he would be set upon by hit wizards and attack trolls.

He wasn't. There was nothing awaiting them but a tired-looking Healer who opened the doors. She nodded at Potter and gave Draco a nasty look, but the only thing she said was, "He's awake. Do try not to upset him, would you?"

"I never _try_ to upset him," Potter mumbled, but the Healer was already bustling back to a small pushcart laden with potions. Potter led the way straight to a bed that was partly concealed by delicately striped curtains, and Draco followed at a slight remove. He was looking at the other patients in the ward, the grotesque disfigurements and the glassy stares, the persistent twitches and the detritus of a disordered mind...even Gilderoy bloody Lockhart was still here, autographing a stack of pictures to himself in a useless scrawl, oblivious to everyone around him.

"Mate?" Potter said softly, sticking his head inside the curtains. "All right, Ron?"

A blunt snort was the only response. Draco realized he was holding his breath.

"Just wanted to see how you were," Potter said, but his voice was so laden with forced good cheer that it was horrible to listen to.

"I know," Ron's voice said softly on the other side of the curtain. He certainly didn't sound psychotic to Draco.

Potter cleared his throat a bit. "There's some else here who'd like to see you."

"I know," Ron repeated, sounding a bit annoyed. Then: "Wanna talk to you, Malfoy. 'S important."

Draco looked at the curtain, then at Potter, who sighed loudly and raked his fingers through his hair. "Don't even start," he said. "He probably overheard me telling Hermione"

Draco didn't wait for Potter to keep rationalizing. He slipped around him and stepped through the curtain, saying as he did, "Good afternoon, Weasley, I do hope you're feeling"

He stopped short. He stared.

"Blue stars," Ron said, calmly as anything.

Ron was wearing a thin pair of hospital pajamas that revealed in garish detail the protruding bones under his waxy skin. He sat in the middle of a bed with his knees drawn up, rocking back and forth. His hair hung limply in his face, nearly obscuring his eyeshis eyes, where were wide open and so dilated that they looked black.

The bed had a quilt on it. There were flowers and photographs on a little table next to it. But on the wall behind, drawn in what looked like crayon, were tremendous, wobbly blue starsdozen of them. And underneath, in jagged letters of black ink, were the words:

EDAM

PASLEY

GLASS

Draco took a step backward. "Er," was about all he could get out.

Ron suddenly leapt to his feet, and in two long strides he was standing in Draco's face. "Blue stars," he said again, vehemently.

"I think I should be going"

"Blue stars!" Ron seized Draco by the front of the robes, and now he was practically screaming; spit flew from his mouth and onto Draco's face. "Blue stars, white flowers! You won't taste it so don't try it. He favors the left, but you have to remember, _you_ have to remember because I'm not here. The blue stars and the paisley and the glass"

Potter shoved his arms between them and tried to push Ron away; Draco stumbled, and crashed dramatically into the curtain. From the floor he could only sit gaping as the other two struggled, Ron still shouting incoherently about flowers and stars. The Healer raced over, made a surprisingly athletic vault over Draco, and cast some sort of charm that sent Ron's whole body limp. "I _told_ you not to upset him," she said harshly, as she guided Ron heavily back to the bed. "And who on Earth allowed him to mark up the walls like this?

As she erased the words and stars with a flick of her wand, Draco clambered to his feet. Some of the other patients were aware enough to watch him with shock or interest or fear; others had been disturbed by the noise, and were now screaming or sobbing loudly. Ron struggled weakly to raise his head in Draco's direction. "Remember," he slurred. "Harry, make him remember. I can't, not here..."

Draco brushed himself off and went to stand by the doors. They were, of course, locked again. He pressed his forehead against the glass and took deep breaths until his heart rate had settled. When he looked up, Potter was standing next to him. He no longer looked angry, or even annoyed; he had taken off his glasses and was polishing the lenses half-heartedly on his sleeve, and his shoulders had a definite slump. "That wasn't exactly what I intended," he said quietly, "but it did get the point across, didn't it?"

"He..." Draco swallowed. "I had no idea."

Potter glanced up at him briefly. "You really didn't, did you?"

Draco shook his head mutely. His mind replayed to him images of Ron sharing a table with him, lying on his hearthrug, cracking jokes with Nibblethe hadn't missed something, had he? Some sign that things were not as they seemed? But of course, he had been playing along with this pretense of the Sightonly playing, reminded himself, nothing more. He couldn't have been expected to interpret everything correctly. He hadn't had enough information.

The Healer bustled over and all but threw them out of the ward. Draco caught one last glimpse of the striped curtains around Ron's bed before the doors of the ward slammed shut. "I'm sorry," Potter sighed, and put his glasses back on. "You needed to understand, and I didn't think you would believe me if I just told you."

"I wouldn't have," Draco said heavily. He straightened his robes and thrust his hands in his pockets. It took him a moment to grind out the words, "Thank you."

Potter shrugged. "Don't know why he glommed onto you all of a sudden."

"I suspect it involves my stunning good looks and charming personality," Draco mumbled.

Potter hesitated for a moment, then, very slowly, reached out and patted Draco's arm. Draco stepped out reach. "Well," Potter said briskly. "He won't bother you any more, at least not while he's in here, you can count on that."

"He should never have been allowed to bother me in he first place," Draco said. "Why don't you just leave him in here?"

"Hope springs eternal," Potter said with a weak smile. Draco walked away from it.


	5. Chapter 5

Draco did not speak to anyone but Nibblet for a solid week, and he only spoke to Nibblet because she threatened not to feed him if he didn't. He had all his work brought to the Manor by express owl and he kept the curtains of every room tightly shut, even though Nibblet informed him that spring had sprung in spectacular fashion. He lurked indoors with an endless supply of trashy literature and he was thoroughly content that way.

"Master is sulking," Nibblet declared one afternoon as she carted away his tea.

"I am not sulking," Draco told her. "And you should throw yourself down a few flights of stairs for impertinence."

"Nibblet is only speaking truth," she said, and had the audacity to climb into the couch where he was sitting and perch on his shins. "Master is not being the same since Master went to see Mr. Wheezy."

"On the contrary," Draco said. "I rather think I've gone back to my old self since washing my hand of that lunatic and his delusions."

"Master's old self was leaving the Manor sometimes," Nibblet said. "Master's old self was smiling sometimes. Master's old self was letting Nibblet open the curtains."

"Take my advice, it'll fade the upholstery."

Nibblet made a sound like a hot kettle. "Master is not ought to stay inside!" she said. "Master is lonely."

Draco snorted, and looked up from the paper. "I believe that, if I were lonely, I would be the first to know," he said.

She shook her head fiercely. "Master is lonely for so long Master does know it anymore," she declared. "But Master was getting on with Mr. Wheezy."

"Master was semi-publicly embarrassed by Mr. Wheezy and wants nothing more to do with him," Draco muttered.

"Yes," Nibblet said with a sage nod. "That is meaning that Master is missing him."

Draco dropped the paper and stared at her. "You've done yourself lasting brain damage, haven't you?"

"Master should prove Nibblet wrong," she said, and folded her arms across her tiny chest. "Master should show Nibblet that Master is not sulking."

"And how am I to do that?"

With a tiny pop, she produced a card and handed it to him. It took Draco several moments to realize what it was: an RSVP for a garden party held by Osric Bristlecomb, a major shareholder in Cleansweep. He vaguely remembered his secretary mentioning it. He tossed it back at Nibblet. "Sorry, I'm not interested."

"Then Nibblet will write to Master's secretary and tell them that Master is too distraught to attend."

"What? _Distraught?"_ He snorted, and buried his face in the paper again. "Hardly. I simply have no desire to be bored out of my mind."

"Master is being able to gauge the confidence of Master's competition in their new products for the Quidditch season."

Draco blinked from behind the newspaper. He really ought to stop letting Nibblet handle his post. At least with Crabbe and Goyle, he'd known for a fact they weren't reading it behind his back. "I don't need to worry about competition," he said. "We've got the prototype Tiercel 450 in the pipe, haven't we?"

Nibblet rock back and forth for a moment, biting her lower lip. Then she said, quietly, "Master is not wanting to go because Master is sad about Mr. Wheezy."

"You've already tried that one, my dear."

"Master is not wanting someone else to make him sad like Mr. Wheezy did."

Draco kicked Nibblet to the floor and folded up his paper. "I did not hire you to perform psychoanalysis," he snapped. "Don't you have something to...to prune, this time of year? Or dust? Or macerate?"

"Nibblet could be fertilizing the nasturtiums," she said with a little frown.

"Then why don't you get on with it?" Draco thought for a moment, then added, "And when you've finished that, go into the attic and run in circles for a while. Two hours ought to do it, I can finish the paper by then."

Nibblet sighed. "Master is sublimating his aggression."

"Out!"

She vanished with a snap, but she left behind the RSVP card. It was a very bright white against the deep blue and greens of the rug, and it stood out in Draco's peripheral vision no matter how he positioned himself on the couch. And it was his favorite couch, too, so it wasn't as if he could just _move_.

"Oh, blast," he muttered, and picked up the card.

The party was the coming Saturday. A garden party. _With Fireworks Courtesy of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes,_ the card said. He almost tore it to pieces right then. _But not because I'm sublimating aggression,_ he thought. _I'm not sublimating anything. I don't even know what sublimation is._

He conjured a quill and signed the card with a dramatic flourish on the _y._ He checked the corridor to ensure that Nibblet wasn't watching. Then he hurried to the cupola where the owls lived, to send his acceptance to Mr. Bristlecombe. _Just so that Nibblet shuts up. That's all._

-\\--\\--\\-

 

He regretted it instantly, of course. Bristlecombe was new gold, and he announced the fact was writ large across everything he did. His robes were loud in all the wrong ways, and the party decorations were clumsy copies of the sorts of things that even people like the Macmillans had been doing years before. Draco was particularly disgusted by the number of house-elves on display, each wearing a little embroidered waistcoat: no doubt they'd all been rented for the night from Granger's elf registry. Most of them looked miserable, or at least mildly disgruntled, and they certainly weren't working with the sort of diligence a real elf would show its rightful masterthey were sassy with the guests, they rushed through their tasks, and Draco noticed rubbish left to lie for _minutes_ at a time. Nibblet would've been disgusted.

The food was mediocre and the grass was damp, but the night did have one saving graceit was, as Nibblet had suggested, a hotbed of broom-industry intrigue. Draco suffered through small talk with Bristlecombe and his equally vapid wife, and was rewarded with introduction to two master broomwrights and the official buyer for the Wigtown Wanderers. He sipped his drinkdeplorably cheap champagneand enjoyed a round of competitive boasting with Madame Short of Comet, in which he managed to convince her that the Tiercel 450 would come with an advance braking charm, a cloaking device, and an on-board cappuccino maker. Flyte of Flyte and Barker got deep enough into her cups to let slip a few vicious remarks about Pinkley, and the seeker for the Ballycastle Bats arrived fashionably late on a Tiercel 430 without Draco even having to bribe him. By all accounts it should've been a productive and enjoyable evening.

But in spite of it all, Draco was bored.

He blamed Nibblet.

Watching the rented elves circulate in the fading twilight, Draco grazed at a cheese platter under a spray of paperwhites and decided it was all Nibblet's fault. He ought to flog her himself for it. Nibblet had obviously been the one to attract Ron Weasley's attention to begin with, going to the market in public. Nibblet was the one who'd warmed up to him after Draco had made the monumental mistake of letting him into the Manor. It had been Nibblet, not Draco, who'd played into Weasley's madness with all that promise nonsense, and it had been Nibblet who convinced him to come to Bristlecombe's party, because it was Nibblet who managed to him convince Draco he was _lonely._

Draco was not lonely. Draco was just alone. To say he was lonely implied that he minded it.

"Drink?" asked a voice at Draco's elbow.

He glanced up to find a thin, graying wizard holding out another glass of Bristlecombe's weak punch. Draco accepted automatically. "Thank you. I don't believe we've had the pleasure...?"

"Vance," the wizard said, extending a hand. "Emmett Vance. And, forgive me, but you would be Draco Malfoy."

"I would indeed." Draco shook with him and chose another bit of some mild cheese he couldn't quite identify. Nibblet would have known, but he was annoyed at Nibblet. "I see my reputation precedes me, as usual. What brings you to this depressing little fête, Mr. Vance?"

"Oh, I'm an old friend of the family," Vance said. "Egbert was willing to do an old friend a bit of a favor."

"So you're not in brooms?" Draco asked, sipping his drink.

"Oh, no, no..." Vance laughed a bit and drew out a faded handkerchief with which to pat his forehead. "No, I'm afraid all the, the 'shop talk' has gone ever so slightly over my head tonight. You could, heh, you could say I'm here on family business."

Under any other circumstances, in any other universe, Draco would've thought Vance a weak and vapid man trying to leech a bit of privilege off more competent wizards. Under any other circumstances, Draco would've carried on making polite small talk with the man only as long as it took to wander away and find someone worthy of his time. Under any other circumstances, Draco would've finished his drink.

But he noticed, in the failing light, that Vance's handkerchief was paisley.

_You are being an utter fool,_ he thought, even as he tried discretely to spit another sip of punch back into the glass. Not that the punch tasted like poison, but Ron had said that he wouldn't taste anything...of course, Ron was also psychotic. Draco shook his head. "What sort of business is that, Vance?" he asked briskly.

Vance smiled wanly. "Oh, the revenge business."

Draco dropped the glass of punch to the ground. It burst into glittering shards.

A moment later all the lights in the garden went black. Draco heard the other guests cry out in pleasure, but he was plunged into blind darkness broken only by the sudden grip of Vance's hand on his arm. "You see, Mr. Malfoy," Vance said, and damn if his voice wasn't still was high, nervous warble. "You see, my sister was murdered some years ago. My only sister. On the Dark Lord's command."

For a moment, Draco felt paralyzed by fear, and then he realized he was actually physically paralyzednot by any curse, not that he could feel, but something more subtle that was robbing his muscles of their speed and strength. _You won't taste it, so don't try it,_ Ron had said, and oh, dammit, why hadn't all this vital information come from a more plausible source? A burning bush, for example? Draco didn't think he would've argued with a burning bloody bush.

"I promise myself I would get revenge," Emmett Vance continued, while far away Bristlecombe made some kind of speech, totally oblivious to the murder in progress by the cheese table. "I promised myself, one day, I would find the ones who had hurt her."

"It wasn't me," Draco managed to say, though the words were slurred and thick. "Never met her."

Vance nodded. "I know," he said, then in anguish, "I _know. _I tracked them down. I went to the trials. But they were all dead, almost all of the ones who hurt Emma. The restAzkaban. I can't get to them there. I can't hurt them. Not the ones who were really responsible.

"But you," Vance said, and he stepped closer to Draco, close enough to catch him when the poison buckled his knees, "You walked free. You deceived them all and got off."

"Changed sides," Draco grunted, struggling to get his feet under himself so he could run, or fight, or _something._

Vance shook his head and whispered into Draco's ear like a lover. "Kneazles don't change their spots, Mr. Malfoy. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater. The last Death Eater." Draco felt the slender length of a wand press against his ribs through his robes. "And my last chance to make someone pay for what happened to my sister."

With a throaty blast, the first round of fireworks (provided by Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes) burst into the sky. Vance's head was suddenly haloed by a cloud of whirling blue stars.

"I just wanted you to know," Vance said, and it actually sounded like a bloody apology. _"Avada"_

The garden was bathed in green lightanother firework, a furious Catherine wheel, the perfect camouflage. Draco, squirming, felt his feet settle on the ground. In a burst of panicked strength, he threw all his weight against Vance's chest. Vance staggered, and they both tumbled to the ground before the curse was finished.

Draco rolled off of Vance and straight into the table of cheese, which collapsed on top of him. He clawed weakly at the ground, trying to pull himself free despite the poison leeching strength from his muscles. He couldn't draw a deep enough breath to scream, and in the wildly shifting shadows cast by the fireworks, he briefly lost sight of where Vance was. Then Vance was on him again, standing over him, looking far more terrified than any murderer had a right to. "It's no use!" he shouted over the booms of the fireworks. "It's no use, the poisonyou'll die anyway, in pain, it's no use, Mr. Malfoy!"

Draco kicked Vance in the left knee, as hard as he was able. That wasn't very hard at all, but Vance went down like a sack of doorknobs anyway, and his wand flew away. Grabbing a handful of a convenient boxwood, Draco hauled himself to his knees, and then groped for and drew his wand. He was aware now of people shouting around him, fireworks forgotten even as they continued to send brilliant rainbows bursting across the darkened garden. _Of course none of them notice anything until the messy part is already over, _he thought bitterly.

Then he realized that they weren't looking at him, but at some kind of disturbance on the other side of the yard. _Well, to hell with them,_ he thought blearily, and turned back to his would-be assassin.

"The poison will kill you," Vance said, scuttling crabwise towards the remains of the table. "I'll have kept my promise. It doesn't matter so long as a Death Eater pays for what happened to Emma"

"Do shut _up_ already," Draco said; that is, he tried to, but his tongue and jaw refused to respond and even breathing was beginning to grow difficult. He put all of his effort into pulling himself to his feet; he wanted to do this like a proper wizard. Whatever else he'd lost in the war, he still had more than enough pride.

Draco leveled his wand at Vance.

"It doesn't matter," Vance squeaked, sounding hysterical. "I did it for Emma...I'm not sorry!"

"I don't care," Draco tried to tell him, then concentrated hard. _Avada_

"Stupefy!"

Vance flopped backwards in an ungainly sprawl. Draco turned his head and, with great effort, focused his eyes on the source of the Stunner. Harry Potter was charging ever so dramatically through the confused throng of guests, uniform robe spreading behind him, looking every inch the hero except for the crazy man who was pulling him by the wrist. Ron Weasley was wearing nothing but some rather dirty hospital pajamas and dressing gown that flapped open around his scrawny body, but, against all logic and intuition, he was the one holding the wand.

Until he handed it back to Potter. "Sorry," Ron said. "But he's poisoned."

"Who's what now?" Potter said, not sounding terribly heroic.

"Nnngaaarh," said Draco, right before everything clouded over and went dark.


	6. Chapter 6

Draco awoke in St. Mungo's and had to guzzle about a gallon of various antidotes before his requests for information were answered; a harried-looking Potter even dropped by to explain personally. "Seems like Vance has been tracking your movements for quite some time," he said. "At least, he's got loads of information on you in his cottage...possibly he's been going through the rubbish bins outside your office."

"Remind me to invest in the self-incinerating models," Draco said. "What about the poison?"

"Not Dark magic, but close enough that the Wizengamot isn't going to be lenient with him," Potter said with a sigh. "You were luckyif you'd ingested any more of it, you'd be dead by now, one way or another."

"If you recall, I had prior warning," Draco said. Potter flinched and looked down at his hands. "What part did Rdid Weasley play in the endgame, exactly?"

"He...sort of escaped from the hospital," Potter said. "And, er, kidnapped me. With my own wand."

Draco, to his credit, did not smirk.

"His parents are having another talk with the senior Healer for the fourth floor," Potter added. "About, er, alternative therapies."

"Don't tell me you're finally lending some credence to the idea that he might have been telling the truth all this time," Draco said.

Potter glared at him, and pulled out a long, narrow scroll. "Look, I've got a few questions I need to ask you..."

Draco answered various questions, many of which were asked more than once by different people on different days. Draco drank various antidotes, until all the strength and feeling had returned to all his extremities. Draco stayed in hospital for several days, and received no visitors except for Aurors, Healers, and Nibblet, who briefly disguised herself as a fruit basket. Eventually, Draco went home.

Draco brooded.

"Master is brooding," Nibblet said after he declined her third offer of chicken soup.

"Master isn't hungry," Draco told her. "There's a difference."

"Master needs to get his strength back," she said, and pushed the bowl towards him.

Draco kicked the bowl over and shut himself up in his study, where he made a very long chain of paperclips and threw quills at the ceiling to see if they would stick.

The attack was in the papers for several weeks, and so there was at least the mild distraction of fending off reporters in the cruelest ways he could devise. Then came the trial, in which all Draco really had to do was sit in the courtroom and look victimized; Vance didn't even try to argue his innocence. But then the trial was over and the reporters lost interest, and Draco was able to slide back into his old habits with minimal effort.

Despite his brush with death, nothing in Draco's life had changed in the slightest.

Hence, the brooding.

He couldn't quite explain it, and so he chased Nibblet away every time she tried to ask. He couldn't even think about it clearly, so he spent for more time at the office than necessary, interfering with his employees even when he knew perfectly well that they were better at their jobs than he was, because that was the reason he'd hired them. He couldn't concentrate on reading in the evenings any longer, and so he spent inordinate amounts of time walking in the gardens, or sometimes just wandering the upper floors of the Manor and sticking his head into the many perfect empty rooms. For reassurance, he told himself, because something in his life felt profoundly disturbed. He just wanted to check that everything was still as it should be, as he'd arranged it, as he had _wanted_ it and, naturally, still did. Because nothing had changed, after all. He certainly wasn't looking for anything. Or anyone.

"Master is having an existential crisis," Nibblet complained one evening as he picked at his dinner.

"How would you know?" Draco snapped at her.

"Because Master is not finishing his risotto," she said.

Draco pushed the plate away. "The risotto is terrible," he said. "It needs salt."

Nibblet sniffed. "Nibblet is adding plenty of salt. Master is not tasting anything but Master's own angst."

"Are you speaking German at me?"

Someone knocked at the Manor's front door. Draco was so startled he fell out of his chair. Nibblet disappeared with a pop, then reappeared at Draco's feet before he even had a chance to climb upright. "It is Mr. Wheezy!" she said cheerfully.

_"What?"_

"Mr. Wheezy is visiting us."

Draco blinked and shook his head. "How?"

Nibblet tugged on his sleeve. "Master is not ought to be asking why now! Master is ought to be greeting his guest!"

Draco climbed to his feet, dusted himself off twice, and then marched to the front door. Several different things to say ran through his head at once, including _Thank you, Piss off _and _Your sense of timing is impeccable._ In the end, though, when he threw open the great front doors of the Manor for the man standing on his front stoop, the first thing to come out of his mouth was, "Why aren't you melting?"

Ron blinked at him. "Well, I reckon I'd stain my clothes, for starters."

"I mean," Draco said, "that the wall around the Manor is cursed. You shouldn't have been able to get over it."

"I just climbed the bloody fence, Malfoy."

"You climbed the fence?"

"Er. Mostly."

He looked surprisingly good, Draco thought, both objectively and in comparison to their last meeting. Ron was clean-shaven, his hair was clean and trimmed, his clothes were clean, well fitted and seasonally appropriate. He even appeared to have gained some weight, going from emaciated to merely scrawny. But he was still staring at Draco with his head cocked as if he were listening to something only he and dogs could hear; Draco was not certain whether to find that comforting or not.

He decided to sigh his resignation and step out of the doorframe. "I suppose I'll have to invite you in, then."

"I reckon I've got to thank you for it." Ron stepped into the foyer and Draco heaved the doors shut. "You're not dead."

"Thank you for noticing," Draco said.

"I was right about the murder."

Draco sighed. "Yes, you were. And I...was wrong about your being psychotic."

Ron looked down at his feet and shuffled a bit. "Er. Maybe not all wrong."

"Am I meant to find that reassuring?"

"Just saying."

Nibblet popped into the foyer with a tray of cakes larger than she was balanced on her head like an Indian water bearer. "Mister Wheezy! Mister Wheezy! Nibblet knows you is keeping your promises!"

Ron smiled. "Yeah, well, I try my best."

"Is Potter even speaking to you now?" Draco asked.

Ron shrugged. "He's, er, getting over it."

He fell silent, and Draco could not think of anything particularly clever to say, so they followed Nibblet into the morning room, even though it was night. Nibblet deposited her burden of cakes and brought tea, but this time Weasley did not stuff himself, but merely stared into the fire.

"What are you doing here?" Draco asked eventually, before he asked it of himself.

Ron shrugged. "I, er. Things are getting, you know, better. A bit. I mean, they believe me now."

"Bit difficult not to."

"Hermione bought me this book..." Ron shrugged again. "At least they believe me. And I think...I think I might be getting a bit better. About, you know."

"Functioning in day-to-day life?"

"That too."

Another measure of silence; Draco poured himself a cup of tea. No sense in wasting perfectly good tea.

"Did you," Ron said, then stopped.

"Did I what?"

"Did you really believe me?"

"It would be rather ironic if I did, wouldn't it?" Draco said. "Your own friends and loved ones refused to listen, but your old enemy, the boy you've so long despised..."

"You're not that boy anymore," Ron said promptly. "And I don't think you did believe me."

"I don't suppose it matters either way," Draco said quietly, and gave into the urge to toy with his teacup. "You still saved my life, after your own deranged fashion."

"If you didn't believe me, why'd you let me hang around so much?"

Draco sighed dramatically. "I found you amusing," he snapped. Ron surprisingly, laughed out loud at him. "And just what is so funny?"

Ron shook his head a bit. "You can't even tell the truth without being aa _bitch_ about it, can you?"

"Excuse me?" Draco wasn't certain if he was more offended by the laughter, the epithet, or the mischievous sparkle in Ron's eyes that strongly suggested he wasn't being taken seriously.

"Amusing. Of course I'm amusing." Ron tried to cover his smile with his hand. "You've got to be pretty bored of the house-elf after all these years, right? And who else is _left?"_

"I've already got the house-elf performing psychoanalysis on me," Draco said, "so if you've just come to inform me of how incredibly lonely I don't know I am, you can leave."

That quieted Ron. "Didn't say you were lonely," he said solemnly. "Just alone."

"Exactly," Draco said. "I'm glad someone understands the distinction."

Ron scratched at the knee of his trousers, but there were no frayed threads to pick. "I'm, er. I've been, sort of alone for a while too. With people and all, but...alone, you know."

Draco set down his teacup. He suddenly felt very aware of his heartbeat and the heat of the fire on his skin. "I think I can imagine."

"So I guess I thought," Ron said, and swallowed. He glanced up at Draco, with no tilt of his head, with no cast on his eyes. "I guess I wondered...if maybe...you might, er, want to...to be alone together?"

Draco thought about this for a while. "Just for clarification, that was an attempt at a proposition, was it not?"

"Er," Ron said, "sort of, yeah." He slumped in his seat and folded his arms across his chest.

Draco stood up, feeling a curious disconnect from his body. He wasn't entirely certain that he was actually going to do what he was going to do until he did itstanding, edging around the table, laying a light hand on Ron's stiff shoulder. "In that case," he said, "this discussion would best continue upstairs."

It turned out to be rather gratifying to shock a Seer. Draco supposed it didn't happen nearly often enough.

He let Ron stutter at him for only a moment before tugging on his wrist and leading him upstairsthough not before glancing around to ensure that Nibblet wasn't overtly spying. (Draco had no doubt that she would be watching them covertly, but if he couldn't see her he would be free to assume that she would at least cover her eyes at the appropriate time.) The master bedroom was on the top floor of the house, had played host to several generations of Malfoys and their various indiscretions, and had been as tightly sealed as the rest of the house. So had Draco's childhood bedroom in the garret. Both places held far too many associations for him, pleasant and not, and he saw no reason to face those down when there was a perfectly serviceable suite on the south side of the building that had a nice view of the gardens. Someone once told him that it had been intended to house visiting mothers-in-law. It suited Draco fine.

He led Ron into the suite (which looked far neater than it had when he awoke that morning) and into the bedroom (which had suddenly acquired clean sheets and a roaring fire). Here he paused, because it had been too long since he'd done something like this, and even as he turned to face Ron he couldn't quite believe that he was doing it now. This was a Weasley. This was a Gryffindor. This was a lunatic. This was a mistake.

This was Ron, looking just as uncomfortable as Draco was, but still leaning in for a kiss.

Draco opened his mouth and responded, using both hands to pull Ron's head down to the appropriate height. For all his physical jumpiness, Ron kissed with a certain abandon, thrusting his tongue into Draco's mouth and clutching at Draco's shoulders. Draco left one hand threaded through Ron's hair and with the other traced a path from the top of his shoulders all the long way down to the base of his spine, feeling the shapes of muscle and bone. He felt the warmth of Ron's body and the heat of the fire, felt the wet slide of their mouths and tongues and teeth, the little puffs Ron's breath mingling with his own.

Perhaps that was why he did it, ultimately. Draco kissed Ron, and he _felt_.

They were still fully clothed when they moved to the bed, and when Ron started to fumble with Draco's buttons, Draco brushed his hands away. "What?" Ron asked.

"Have a little patience," Draco mumbled into his neck.

"Wanna touch you," Ron growled, and rubbed his face into the curve of Draco's neck like a cat.

"Merlin, what are you, fifteen?"

But Draco let Ron clumsily undress him, and took his time reciprocating the gesture, took the time to taste and feel every inch of skin he uncovered. Without the bulk of his jumper, Ron looked unhealthy, garishly so; Draco thought he could count every rib, and scars of old curses seemed to crawl in the firelight, up and down his chest and arms. Draco traced his fingers along the hollow of Ron's stomach and the shocking arch of his collarbone, watching the shadows flicker as he breathed.

Ron unbuttoned his own trousers. "Are you just going to sit there?"

"Are you in such a hurry?"

Ron wriggled out of his trousers and pants, revealing a long curse mark down his right thigh and a stone-hard erection. Draco supposed that was answer enough.

He shed his own pants and straddled Ron's thighs, taking both their cocks in hand. Ron pawed at Draco's thighs briefly with sweaty hands before throwing his head back and thrusting into Draco's fist, mouth falling open. Ungodly noises were coming from deep in his chest, and Draco might've found enough breath to mock him for it if he hadn't sounded rather the same. Oh, it had been far too long since he'd had someone else in his bed, since he'd felt someone warm and eager moving against him, since he'd felt anything at all. He stretched out to kiss Ron's throat, taste the sweat there, feel the hammer-blows of his pulse under his lips. Ron tilted his head to nuzzle Draco's hair. Draco kissed his way up to Ron's earlobe and bit.

_"Fuck,"_ Ron blurted, digging his fingers into Draco's arse. "Ah, fuck, more...more?"

"More?"

"Yes, please, anything."

Those words enclosed a world of possibilities, but Draco wasn't thinking along those lines; he was more concerned with groping through his nightstand one-handed and fishing out a bottle of lube without tumbling to the floor. He fumbled with the bottle, dropped it, and tried to pull out the stopper with his teeth before Ron steadied it for him. "All right?"

"Thank you." Draco gave up and used both hands to warm the potion before he reached back and began to prepare himself. Ron, wide-eyed, took over the wanking, and almost reverently followed Draco's wrist to feel what he couldn't see.

It had been too long, all right. Draco tried to be patient, but when Ron began to speed up and make little breathy grunts in time with the strokes of his wrist, he pulled Ron's hand away and rose up on his knees. Only the first inch or so ever really hurt anyway, and then it was smooth and full and the good kind of ache, and Draco couldn't help but make another one of those ridiculous-sounding groan-yelps as he sank down. Ron, surprisingly, held his breath until Draco was all the way down and had gone still; then he exhaled loudly, a whisper that almost sounded like _yeah._

Draco started off slowly, to get the angles right, but with one of Ron's big bony hands on his cock and another one anchored to the place where his hip faded into thigh, gripping, squeezing, that didn't last long. Draco rocked down on Ron's cock, gasping for breath, meeting Ron's hips on the downstroke and then snapping up so high his balls were bouncing off Ron's belly. He tangled his fingers with Ron's on his cock, not sure if he wanted to go faster or slower, to hurry up or make it last, because he just wanted more, more skin, more feeling, more everything. Ron threw his head back and every tending sprang taut in his neck, and with one more blurted curse he slammed into Draco and came. Draco lasted longer, but only just.

He flopped panting onto his back, halfway on top of Ron, and as the last waves of orgasm receded Draco tried to roll away and find something to clean them both up with. Ron suddenly rolled over and flung an arm around Draco's chest, drawing him back. "Stay," he mumbled into the pillows.

"I'm just looking for"

_"Stay,"_ Ron said emphatically.

Against the back of his neck, Draco could feel Ron's eyelashes flicking fast. "What will happen if I don't?" he asked.

Ron's arms tightened around him. "I won't be here if you go."

"Leaving so soon?"

"I won't be _now,_" Ron said. "I needas long as you're here, then I'm now. But if you go I might end up somewhen else."

Draco managed to roll over despite Ron's grip and looked at him. Ron's eyes were large dark, but they were focused on him, on now. For now. "All right," Draco said, and relaxed into Ron's sticky, sweaty embrace. "I suppose I can stay for a bit."

Ron pulled him close and kissed his forehead, nuzzled his hair. "Thank you."

"Just don't get used to it."

That was how they fell asleep, and that was how they awoke the next morning, sticky and smelly and warm. And, no matter how many times Draco threatened her over the years to come, Nibblet never did let him live that down.


End file.
